Operation: CODESTRIKE
by Cmdr. Gen. Marasco
Summary: Second season AU. William isn't the only new student to arrive at Kadic. Four American exchange students have come to the school. Not that the Lyoko gang cares. They have bigger problems. Until two of the Americans find Lyoko...
1. Discovery

Working Title; Code Lyoko: Operation CODESTRIKE

Chris Malar was awoken from his sleep by his cellphone ringing. With a groan, he sat up from his bed and flailed his hand blindly around in attempt to get the phone, still half asleep. He hadn't had time to sleep properly the last couple of days, what with the intense studying he'd been doing for his upcoming finals, and he desperately wanted more. His fingers found the phone, and he quickly flipped it open, not bothering to check the number. He wouldn't have been able to see it anyway, his dorm room being as dark as it was. It was almost 2 in the morning, European Time, and the sun wasn't going to be up for another couple hours.

"Hello?" He mumbled out, accidentally switching into his native English from the French he'd been speaking the last couple weeks due to his lack of sleep.

"Chris, it's Grey." The voice on the other end replied, also in English. Chris sat up abruptly, hard enough to hit his head on the hand-made shelf over his bed. He knew the voice; Grey, a fellow student, roommate, and (by way of being one of three other American exchange students here at Kadic Academy, in addition to Chris himself) probably the closest thing he had to a friend in this middle-of-nowhere-in-freaking-France boarding school. It wasn't really much of a friendship, but (Chris believed) it was certainly better than hanging out with either those two weird French guys, that moody German kid and the gothic hard-ass Japanese girl who was always with them, or (horrors of horrors) that brain-dead excuse for a principal's daughter. Elizabeth, or Sissi or whatever the hell her name was.

Chris shook off the clinging feeling of drowsiness and sat up fully in bed, helped awake by the searing pain in his head. He'd been expecting this call all day. Yesterday (it being after midnight), at lunch, Grey had told Chris that he'd found something. He'd been vague about exactly what it was, but he promised Chris he'd either talk to him face to face or call him when he knew more. Then he'd simply vanished for the rest of the day. Now, Chris wanted to hear what he had to say, if for no other reason than to have a reason to explain his absence.

"What's the situation?" He asked. "You find whatever you were looking for?"  
>"Oh, much, much more than that." Grey said, with a small laugh at the end. Chris felt his scalp prickle. "Listen, you awake?" Grey continued. Chris smirked, knowing Grey couldn't see him.<p>

"What do you think?" He replied sarcastically.

"Good." Grey breezed on, either missing or ignoring Chris's sarcasm. "You have to see this yourself. I can't just describe it over the phone. You think you can sneak out?"

Chris paused, thinking and listening. Around him, the dorm was quiet. The only sounds were the tinkles of the ventilation and heating ducts, the cries of nocturnal creatures outside his window, and what may have been a song coming from the direction of Sissi's room, adjacent Chris's own but on the girl's floor. Chris guessed it was the brainless girl herself, judging by how most of the words he could make out were "Ulrich".

_That_ was the German kid's name, he remembered. Ulrich Stern.

"Yeah, I think I can go." He replied. "Nothing happening here but that retarded frog girl singing."

"Sissi's still awake then?" Grey questioned. "Somehow I'm not surprised."

"You and me both. I think Ulrich stonewalled her. Again." Chris grit his teeth. "So, where are you, anyway?"

"The factory." Grey said those two words as simply as if he were giving the time, but it was a serious shock to Chris. The factory, a decommissioned Renault automobile plant, was beyond school property, separated by a bridge over extremely deep water. He was speechless for a moment, trying to figure out how Grey had gotten in.

"How-" He gasped. Grey chuckled in response.

"The factory isn't as secure as they think," He said mysteriously. Chris blinked, then set his face.

"How do I get to you?" He asked slowly.

Grey paused for a moment, apparently thinking. Finally, he said "Can you keep a secret?"

"You know I can." Chris replied instantly. It was more or less true. There was an unofficial bond between the four American exchange students. They all covered for each other, kept secrets and provided help when needed. He himself had covered for Grey on several occasions, and also knew that one of the two girls that completed the group of exchange students had a crush on the nerdy looking French boy that Ulrich always hung out with.

But Grey seemed unconvinced of his conviction. "Swear it." He said.

"Swear it?" Chris questioned, brain still slightly slow from he recent wakening. "On what?"

"Anything. Something dear to you, I guess."

Chris thought for a moment, then felt his face curve up in a smile. "Okay, I swear on my Google account that I won't tell anyone about this secret, whatever it is."

"Perfect." Grey sounded satisfied. "Okay, here's how you get into the factory; I'm only going to say this once, so listen carefully."

"Worried about someone tracing your call?" Chris quipped.

"More like someone hearing us talk if I was guiding you every step of the way there."

"Ah. Okay, hit me."

"Right." Grey went quiet again, obviously trying to put his route into words. "Okay, you know where the woods are on campus, right?"

"Yeah, course I do." Chris stood up and looked out his window. From there, he could see the large stand of trees that graced part of Kadic's open yard.

"Well, in there is a hatch-"

"Oh yeah!" Chris jumped, surprised. He knew what Grey was talking about. Almost in the center of the woods was a man hole-like metal cover, which Chris had passed almost daily last quarter, as it was the quickest way between two of his classes. He'd always assumed it lead to the sewers or something, and it looked like he was right. "I know what you're talking about. So, what, I go there and go in?"

"Right. That will lead you to the sewers. Once there, walk along the walkway until you reach a ladder. There's only one way you can go, so don't worry about getting lost or anything."

"Then I climb the ladder and I'll be in the factory?"

"Not quite. The ladder will put you on the bridge leading to the factory. Go inside, and use the ropes to reach the bottom floor. Use the elevator to go down. I'll meet you there."

"Roger that." Chris was still a little confused, but he decided he'd make sense of the directions when he got to where he needed to be. "I'm leaving now. Meet you soon."

"Right. Make it fast, would you?"

"Sure." With that, Chris flipped his phone closed, ending the call. He sighed, rubbed his eyes, and quickly got dressed. It was a warm night, meaning he was wearing his normal day outfit to stay cool, so this really only consisted of putting on his shoes and donning a light jacket, which he kept more for it's mass of pockets than anything else, and slipping the World War II-ear combat knife he had received from his grandfather into the sheath on his wrist. Once he was properly attired, he locked his door, quietly pried the window open, and shimmied down the large tree that grew just outside his room. According to what he'd learned during his first week at the academy, the tree had been there since the school was built, almost a century ago. As he climbed down, he wondered how many other young people had used it for just this purpose. He knew of at least three others; they'd carved their initials into the tree itself at some point or another.

Once he reached the lowest branch, Chris dropped the last couple feet to the ground, landing with a grunt. He stood, stretched, and quietly moved off into the woods, making sure to scuttle between the shadows of the trees to avoid detection. He doubted anyone would be awake (and he knew for sure Sissi wouldn't be looking out her window towards the woods), but there was still the chance that someone was actually up, and he'd seen Jim Moralis, the school's gym teacher, patrolling the grounds sometimes, which he never really understood. Chris didn't feel like taking any chances.

He got lucky; the only thing moving out in the woods was him. He moved as quickly as he could, and slipped quietly into the woods. As he moved through, he passed the random utility shed that had the bizarre graffiti caricature of Jim as a king on it. He paused to look at it, noticing that it was starting to wear away from almost a year in the sun, but turned away quickly as he felt a sudden rush of deja vu. He shook it off and continued slinking through the shadows till he reached the hatch. He opened it easily and slipped in. Despite the fact that it was underground, it was surprisingly easy to see in the tunnel; there was probably some way for natural light to come in.

When he reached the bottom of the ladder, he saw that Grey had been right; the tunnel behind him was effectively blocked off by a large grate. So he turned the other way and continued. The tunnel he had entered appeared to be a drainage pipe of some form. He was walking along a narrow walkway, and to his right was a canal filled with water. He found the sound of the water running by him strangely soothing.

Distracted by the water as he was, he wasn't really looking at his feet, and as he moved down the tunnel he almost tripped over something on the floor. After regaining his feet, he shook himself off and looked down. Upon examination, it turned out to be a collection of sports equipment; three skateboards and two scooters. Chris considered borrowing one of the boards to speed up his trip, but decided against it; the owners might come back. So he continued on foot.

The walk turned out to be longer than he expected. After a couple minutes, he decided to speed up his trip and broke into a sprint. Sprinting was one thing Chris did well; he could out-run just about anyone on both the Kadic campus and his original school back in the States. He covered the space necessary quickly, and found the ladder he was looking for minutes later. With a slight sense of trepidation, he started climbing. Like Grey had told him, there was a hatch at the top, similar to the one that he'd used to enter the sewers at the other end of the tunnel. He climbed out and shut it behind him, then took the time to observe his position.

He was on top of the bridge leading into the factory. Below him, he could hear the lapping of the tide against the pilings that held the span up. Feeling slightly unnerved by the emptiness of the bridge before him and not wanting to keep Grey waiting, he sprinted into the factory.

Once he got inside, he was surprised to find that it was just as light inside as it had been outside. Chris stopped, reviewing what Grey had told him. He needed to "use the ropes to get to the bottom floor." He saw why; at one point there had been stairs leading down from where he was to the lower floor, but they had either rotted away or been removed at one point or another.

Chris easily found the ropes; they were simply dangling before him. Without hesitation, he grabbed on and swung down, landing awkwardly but recovering with a roll. He stood, brushed himself off, and looked around. The only thing on this level besides him was a freight elevator, which Chris guessed was the one Grey had told him about. So he stepped inside and slammed the down button with his fist, crossing his arms as the elevator descended. The trip was short, and Chris found himself facing what had to be the most ridiculously secured door he'd ever seen. It was colored yellow and green, and looked to be at least several inches thick. Sensing his presence, or possibly the arrival of the elevator, the middle of it seemed to glow along lines carved into the metal, then spun to the left, paused while what looked like lightning skittered across its surface. It rose out towards Chris, just enough so the large metal braces behind it could rise and release. The door slid apart with a hiss of gas and a whir of machinery. With a small amount of anticipation, Chris stepped forward.

The room before him was, for lack of a better word, amazing. Everything was metal, with the exception of a couple parts of the floor, which were covered by massive cables as thick as his arm, if not thicker in some cases. In the very center was some kind of flat area, where all the cables seemed to lead to. Hanging from the ceiling over this area was a large metal brace of some form, which held up a bank of monitors and a keyboard. Before this was a chair, which itself seemed to be on a metal pole installed in a groove that encircled the central area.

Chris whistled, impressed.

"Hot damn." He whispered.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Said a quiet voice. Chris jerked in shock, hand pulling his knife free of its sheath and readying it to throw. He calmed as his brain recognized the speaker.

"Grey." He said quietly, sliding the knife home again.

The chair before the monitors turned with a mechanical _whirr_, and Chris found himself face to face with a slightly pale, brown haired grey eyed kid about his age, sitting quite comfortably in the chair. "Christopher." Grey replied, steepening his fingers and blinking. "Glad to see you made it here."

"Yeah, wasn't too hard, actually." Chris said with modesty. "But yeah, it is impressive. Just trying to figure out _what _it is."

Grey nodded and grunted in agreement, before turning back to the monitors. "I'm not entirely sure myself," he admitted. "But from what I've been able to find, I think it may be some kind of supercomputer."

"Wait, you mean like those Cray things they used in Jurassic Park?" Chris asked. Grey shrugged.

"Yes, but if I'm right, this thing is decades more advanced."

"A French supercomputer. Interesting." Chris scratched his neck and looked over Grey's shoulder at the screen he was working on. Data scrolled by, brought up by the codes input by Grey. "So, what's it do? Figure out the perfect wine for any meal? Abstract art?" A wicked smile spread across his face. "Surrender when you try to break into encrypted areas?"

"Sadly, no." Grey replied, not taking his eyes from his work. "But that's only because there doesn't seem to be any encryption.

He paused, thinking again, then added; "Though I don't really think "supercomputer" is really an appropriate term anyway."

"What, it's not as good as its name suggests?" Chris smirked again.

"No, it's just...not right. Calling it a supercomputer hints that it's made for computation. It's not built for that at all. Actually, "artificial universe" would be a more appropriate term."

"What do you mean?" Chris frowned, confused.

"See for yourself." Grey, still typing, pointed at the flat area that the chair and monitors encircled. Chris moved closer and leaned in. Now that he was closer, he could see there was something there; a hologram, of what he wasn't sure.

He leaned still closer. As he did, his eyes opened in surprise. The hologram was a map, divided into four different sections, each with a different topography. Chris made out trees, desert, snow, and a mountainous area.

"Whoa." He muttered. "It's like a video game!"

"It's much bigger than that." Grey said, still tapping at keys. "If I'm right, what you're looking at is an entire virtual world."

"So this thing here-" Chris pointed at the hologram. "This isn't just an image. This thing is real?"

"Yes. The computer seems to have been built for just this purpose. To run an artificial world."

Chris whistled. "You found any reason _why_ the French would want built a world inside a computer?" he asked.

"Again, no, sadly." Grey sighed, and finally paused in his work to glance at Chris. He grinned evilly. "I will, however, have it soon."

"Oh? How's that going to work?" Chris moved over to stand behind Grey and look at the screens again. Grey continued typing.

"You remember that time that Millie's computer broke a couple weeks ago?"

"Hard not to." Chris smiled, remembering. "She thought Sissi did it, didn't she? Got hella mad at her."

Both boys started quietly laughing, each remembering a different section of the massive fight between Millie and Sissi.

"Yeah, that's what happened. Do you know how it ended?"

"No, not really. I did hear that Millie got her computer patched up, though."

"And you would be right." Grey once again began working, but Chris could see he was smirking to himself. Chris found himself smiling as well.

"Let me guess," he said, leaning back against the chamber walls and crossing his arms. "_You_ fixed her computer for her."

"Precisely." Replied Grey. "Anyway, let me just say this; Millie's standard, civilian computer proved much more of a challenge to me than this thing." He patted the monitor before him. Chris leaned in to see better. Data scrolled across it, listing events happening inside the computer.

"So what exactly are you doing?" He asked. Grey smiled again.

"I'm sending some personally coded programs into each of the computers main systems. Once inside, they make copies of everything around them, then absorb those copies and return them to me."

"Your copy and pasting the entire computer network." Said Chris, slightly in awe. Grey shrugged.

"More or less, I guess." He snickered at his unintentional joke. "Once I have all the systems copied, I'm going to look through them and see if there's any explanation for this universe."

"Seems pretty complex a plan to just figure out what this thing does." Chris noted.

"That's not all." Grey continued. "When I'm done, I'm going to compress them and store them on this." He pointed to a small, black box that seemed to be plugged into the monitors.

"Hey, you found your portable hard drive!" Chris noted, recognizing the box. "So what are you going to do with the data once you get it?"

"You mean, what are _we_ going to do with the data." Grey corrected.

"We? What's with the _we_?" Chris blinked in confusion.

"I'm asking for your help, Chris." Grey explained. "This is too big a project for me, and you're the only person in the whole damn school who I can really trust."

"Okay then..." Chris said, unsure of what else there was to say.

"And as for what we're going to do? Well..." Grey smiled evilly again.

"Well, what?"

"Anything." Grey turned to face Chris, eyes alight. "We can do anything we want with it."

Chris fell silent, thinking of the possibilities.

"If we sold it to the right person..." He smiled himself, pressing one hand into the palm of the other as he did. "Man, I could buy sixteen Xboxes! And controllers for all of them! Oh man...think about it! Sixteen Xboxes on a single, glorious LAN connection!"

"You wouldn't need to sell it at all." Grey said. "This thing is so powerful, you could hook together sixteen Xboxes on a LAN connection…wirelessly."

"Wow." Chris said in awe.

"Wow indeed." Grey agreed. "But this is why this has to stay a secret. If this got out-"

"Someone else could do their own LAN system." Chris hissed, feeling strangely angry. Grey opened his mouth to say something more, then shut it.

"Yes, that's one reason." Grey nodded. "Plus, I don't believe the French government knows of this computer. I'd rather not like to think what would happen if they got their hands on it."

Chris paused, thinking of the possibilities. "Oh shit..." he muttered.

"I figured that would matter to you." Grey said with a small smile. "Nothing to get a patriotic person's blood flowing like the possibility of your government getting their ass kicked by someone else."

"Hey, I've got every right to be patriotic!" Chris snapped back, angrily pointing a finger at Grey's back. "My grandpa fought-"

"And bled on this land so we could be free-Yeah, you've told me before. You told everyone in the school when Millie interviewed you for the news."

"Stupid loli frog." Chris grumbled, leaning back against the wall of the chamber and crossing his arms.

"I am also aware of your bias against the French." Grey added. "Though it is understandable, considering your grandfather's ordeal at Normandy-"

"Look, I got your point, okay? As of now, this thing is classified, Omega Red Alpha level. We don't talk about it in front of _anyone_. Clear?"

"Omega Red Alpha?" Grey questioned. "That's not a real censorship level."

"I know." Chris replied, slightly annoyed. "I can't think of any real secrecy level that worked for this thing. So I made one up."

"Works for me." Grey turned and went back to work. Chris nodded, then turned and headed for the elevator for the surface.

He had a lot to take in.


	2. Problems

Operation CODESTRIKE

Chapter 2

The next day, Chris sat at his usual table in the cafeteria, trying to fight of the encroaching feeling of sleep caused by his late night in the factory. The fact that he hadn't been able to sleep due to the amount of information whirling through his head didn't help either. He took a long drink of his coffee (one good thing about France, he thought; they are definitely cooler about teenagers drinking anything coffee) to force the sleepiness back and looked around the room.

There really wasn't anything out of the ordinary happening; the cafeteria was just as loud, warm, and crowded as it always was. The students sat in their little groups, just like in the cafeteria at his original school in the States. The reasoning was different, the result was the same. Two tables to his left, and three down, he could see Sissi sitting at her regular table, flanked by the two boys who went everywhere with her, Herve (or Herb, he'd heard it used interchangeably) and Nicolas, he remembered their names to be. Chris glared at the girl and quickly gave her group the finger before continuing to scan the room.

He spied Millie sitting several tables over from Sissi, red hair standing out against a backdrop of brown and black. Chris noticed that the girl was typing away at her computer, and made a small, silent toast to Grey for fixing the piece of equipment.

Speaking of Grey...Chris kept scanning, looking for his "friend". No sign of him, even after a full two minutes of looking. He did notice, however, the arrival of Ulrich Stern, followed by his three friends. Lacking anything else to do, Chris shifted his attention to them, slipping into the passive observer mindset his grandfather had taught him.

The four students grabbed a table together (as far away from Sissi as possibly, Chris noticed), and quickly began talking amongst themselves in rapid French. Chris tried to listen in, but the distance between them, and their lowered voices, made it all but impossible to pick anything. So Chris sat back and simply watched from afar.

Someone came to join him at the table. Chris glanced over to his right and noticed it was Grey.

"Where the hell have you been?" He asked. Grey shrugged.

"Working on the computer. I was-" Grey's sentence cut off in a cry as Chris slammed his fist down on his hand. He yanked the injured appendage away, cursing. "What was that for?" He muttered angrily, not wanting to draw any more attention than he already was, as multiple groups of people had stopped their conversations and turned to look at him when he'd cried out.

"Omega Red Alpha censorship, remember?" Chris hissed back. "I said we don't talk about this in front of _anyone_. And this is in front of a _bunch_ of people."

"Fine." Grey muttered. "But can I at least finish what I was going to say if I be more discrete?"

"Sure." Chris leaned back and took another swig of coffee.

"Basically, I was working. Finishing up what I started this morning.

"This morning?" Chris blinked in surprise. "When did you go to bed?"

"I didn't." Grey replied simply, reaching down to open the can on his lunch tray, which Chris had failed to notice when he sat down. "I tried to, but insomnia was rearing its ugly head again. So I used the time for something useful."

Chris glanced at the drink Grey had. It turned out to be a Red Bull. Massive surprise that they'd have it available here. They _were_ in France, after all, and the drink was of Austrian origin...

"Good old insomnia." He said, turning from Grey to scan the room. Once again, his eyes fell upon Ulrich and his friends.

"Checking out the Stern gang, eh?" Grey noted through a mouthful of breakfast pastry. Chris grunted in response.

"Interesting students, to say the least." Grey continued. "The whole group of them." Grey paused in his eating, then glanced at Chris. "You know any of them?"

"Just Ulrich. And that's just by name. Heard him and Sissi arguing a couple times."

"Yep, that's Stern alright." Grey said cheerfully. "Always chewing Sissi out."

Chris snorted into his coffee. "Oh, I would bet Sissi would enjoy being chewed out by Ulrich…" He said, grinning. Grey smiled, recognizing the innuendo. He raised his pastry in mock salute, then continued to look at Ulrich's group, hand cupping chin. Chris joined him. He found his attention being drawn to one of the boys in the group, specifically the spike he'd gelled his hair into and the large purple dot in the center of it.

"Interesting hairdo there." He noted, twitching his head at the boy.

"Oh, on Odd. Yeah, it's impressive. Especially considering that purple dot is a natural thing-"

"Wait, did you just say his name was _Odd_?" Chris questioned, surprised. Grey nodded calmly.

"Yep. Odd Della Robia. Local Parisian. Joined the school a little under a year ago. He's a boarder, apparently. Both his parents are artists of some kind, can't keep an eye on him."

"Explains the name too." Chris noted quietly. Grey nodded and continued.

"Actually, apparently the name comes from a corruption of Odin, actually." He said. "But I digress. Odd doesn't have the best grades ever. C's, primarily. Skateboards in his spare time. Also plays guitar and drums, I believe. I know he's in that band with Jim and Ulrich."

Chris simply stared at Grey as he concluded his recital. Grey looked at him calmly.

"Okay, where in the hell did you get all that?" Chris whispered. Grey shrugged.

"You'd be amazed at what you can find when you know where to look." Grey replied, smiling evilly. "I did a little digging in the schools files. Surprising stuff there, really."

"Aren't those files secured?" Chris asked, shocked more by the fact that Grey had managed to crack the files than the fact that he did. He could care less if it was probably illegal. Anything that screwed the French over was something good in his book.

Grey shrugged.

"They are…but it's nothing that I couldn't handle. Just accessed it through the principal's login. Three guesses what his password was."

"Sissi." Chris said instantaneously. Grey nodded.

"Of course. Didn't take me that long to figure that out, I have to say. He should really re-think his computer security."

"Good luck with that, he's French." Chris added snidely. "So, what else did you find? Anything more on these guys?" Chris jerked his thumb at Ulrich.

"A bit, yes." Grey stuffed the rest of his pastry in his mouth, chewed, and then rattled off a large concentration of information.

"The other boy in the group you don't know is Jeremie Belpois. He's from further north, apparently. Doesn't say where. Far enough away that he boards here, though. Quiet kid, excellent grades, of course. Probably top of the class. Has a thing for electronics and robots, apparently. Standard super-smart geeky kid. He's probably got autism too, from what I've seen."

"I'm pretty sure that Shiloh has a crush on him too," Chris added, referencing one of the other two American exchange students. "And the gothic Asian girl?"

"Yumi Ishiyama. She's _really _interesting. From what I've read, she was born in Japan. Kyoto, I think, but moved here with her parents when she was four. Lives with them now, off campus. Speaks both Japanese and French. Grades are standard, but a bit higher than normal in some subjects. She also knows a couple martial arts. I've seen her practicing with Ulrich in the gym. I have to say, they can get pretty physical."

Chris grunted and slugged down some more scalding brew. "Nice. Have to check those out. You find anything on Ulrich himself?" He asked.

Grey hummed quietly, thinking. "Ah yes, Ulrich Stern. He's of German decent, obviously. Grandson of the famous General Heinrich Stern, and his father-"

Grey paused in his speech as he noticed Chris's fingers brushing the handle of his combat knife, still in the sheath on his wrist. "Something wrong?" He asked. Chris shook his head, despite the sudden anger he felt in his chest.

"Go on." He said. Grey looked at him hard, then nodded and continued.

"As I was saying, his father is one of the heads of R&D at Heckler and Koch. You know of them, I assume."

"Of course I do." Chris said, smiling. "What fan of military hardware would I be if I didn't? Gun makers, on par and if not better in some cases with Colt and Smith and Weston. Makers of the MP5 submachine gun and the HK line of rifles. Couple good pistols under their belts as well. Good, solid tech."

"Right. So, Ulrich again. Grades are okay, pretty average. Little higher than Odd's, but not by much. Likes martial arts, practices with Yumi, as mentioned before. Pretty athletic as well."

"Saw him practicing soccer earlier this week." Chris agreed, though his voice was sour. "Kid's got the makings of the next David Beckham if he can pull that bicycle kick off on the field."

"Feeling a little jealous?" Grey probed.

Chris glared at him.

"Though so. Oh, another interesting thing; you won't see this, and I doubt he'll tell you voluntarily, but he's filthy rich."

"No surprise." Chris said, though in reality his was very surprised. "With connection to H&K, I'm amazed he's at this school. He could easily have gone somewhere else."

"Indeed."

The two fell silent, watching as Ulrich, Odd, Jeremie and Yumi talked animatedly amongst each other. Grey furrowed his brow in thought as he watched.

"That's interesting," he noted. "It would seem that Ulrich has feelings for Yumi."

"Sure," Chris began, intending to laugh at his friend, but Grey cut him off. He tilted his head towards the four students, and frowned. Wanting to know what was going on, Chris joined.

Jeremie was the one speaking, and his excitement was evident in his voice. Unfortunately, this made it so that Chris had a hard time telling exactly what he was saying. He picked out only three words, but they were both worrying; "factory," "computer," and "program". He also heard two words that made no sense to him at all, so much so that he wasn't sure he heard them right; 'aelita", and "lyoko."

Chris turned to Grey, seeking clarification. What he saw made him even more worried; Grey's face had turned the color of his name, pupils wide in horror. With almost painful suddenness, Grey grabbed Chris's arm and started to pull him out of the cafeteria, leaving their food behind, half finished. Chris shook himself free and walked on his own, Grey hurrying behind him.

The two of them moved out of the school and onto the grounds, seeking a place to talk privately. They would have gone to their dorm room, but it was off limits at this time of day, a rule that Chris chalked up to the implementation of the French people's unwritten law for affording young lovers places to meet. So instead they headed for the small series of benches just outside the cafeteria. It was mostly empty; the only other student there was a dark-skinned girl with red streaks in her hair that Grey identified as Samantha Knight, before wondering what she was doing on campus despite not actually being a student at the school. Not wanting to look suspicious, Grey waved at and Chris saluted the girl, who answered both motions with a nod.

Grey led Chris to the bench farthest from where the Samantha sat, then sat down himself. Chris joined him, crossing his arms.

"Okay, what the hell is going on?" He asked, voice a hoarse whisper.

"It's Jeremie." Grey whispered back. "You heard what he said."

"Yeah. Something about a computer and a factory and stuff. Could be a coincidence, though."

"I wish." Grey said grimly. "But he said "lyoko". That proves it's anything but."

"Lyoko? What the hell is a lyoko?" Chris wondered.

"Not what, _where_." Grey corrected. "That's the name of the virtual world we found. I found that out this mourning."

"_That's_ what it's called? Lyoko?" Chris's voice was incredulous. "Jeez, is there no limit to the weirdness of the French?"

"Not what I would have chosen to call it, yes." Grey said quietly.

"Sounds Japanese." Chris noted, leaning back. "Probably a codename. Still, what's to worry about? You don't think they cracked the computer, do you?"

"I don't know. That's the problem." Grey leaned back as well and looked straight up into the mostly-blue sky. "I can't tell if someone else has been accessing the computer. I don't know the idiosyncrasies of it well enough yet."

"So they could be in the computer doing who knows what…and we wouldn't be able to know they were there?" Chris breathed, sudden panic clamping in his chest. To himself, he said _Ain't no freaking frog gonna steal my sixteen Xboxes!_

"Well, we'd know they'd been there." Grey smiled darkly, and a small amount of color returned to his face. "I can track who accesses the computer. What they do there…that's the harder thing to track."

Chris sighed and rubbed his eyes. "I don't like this," he said. "I don't like this at all."

"Neither do I," agreed Grey. "But there's really not much we can do about it."

"But there's still something." Chris said, sitting up again and focusing on Grey. "You said _not much_. What can we do?"

"Well, I can speed up the copying of the systems, for one thing," replied Grey. "I've been scanning all the data for anything useful. I can skip that step and just archive it."

"Good, good. Do that." Chris breathed a sigh of relief, the feeling of panic leaving his chest. "Say, didn't you say you tried to sleep last night, but couldn't?"

"Yeah, I did. After you left the factory, I worked for an hour or so, then came back and tried to sleep. Didn't work."

"So, what, you went back to the factory again? I didn't remember hearing you leave."

"No. And I didn't leave. There wasn't any need, or point, I guess. I can access the supercomputer from my own laptop."

"So you could continue downloading the programs without going to the factory." Chris said slowly. In his mind, a plan slowly gelled together.

"All but the most complex ones, definitely yes." Grey smiled, falling into mental step with Chris. "I can even set it to run automatically without me. I've got about a fourth of all the data stored already. I would think we wouldn't need more than the rest of today and tomorrow to get the rest of it."

"And the really complex ones?"

"We'll have to be there at the computer for that. If I tried to do it over a wireless network, they could get corrupted. I don't want to risk that. But there's not that many of them. Shouldn't take that long. We can do it tomorrow night."

"Alright, now we're talking." Chris said, clapping his hands together in satisfaction. "When can you set up the program?"

"About an hour from now. My class is joining with Mrs. Hertz for some field trip. I was going to bring my laptop anyway, but now I've got a reason to. I can hash out the program when I'm on the bus."

"Nice." Chris smiled broadly. He punched Grey's shoulder. "I figured you'd have something up your sleeve to get us out of this."

"Yes…" Grey muttered. Chris was about to say more when the school bell ran, indicating the end of lunch. With a grunt, he stood up and started to walk away, but Grey put a hand on his shoulder. He stopped and turned.

"What now?" He asked, frustrated.

"That thing earlier, when I mentioned Heinrich Stern. What was that about?"

Chris glared at him in response, then sighed.

"Old history, okay? Nothing more. Stern was the guy who was covering my grandpa's beach at Normandy. He's the guy who slaughtered most of his unit."

Grey's face lit up with sudden realization. "No…_he's _the guy your grandpa fought hand-to-hand with in that bunker above Sword Beach?"

"Yeah, pretty sure." Chris glowered.

"Amazing." Grey muttered to himself. "That the grandchildren of two enemies during WW II would end up in the same school almost sixty years later."

"Yeah, it's cool. But it doesn't have anything to do with our plan. That's what we need to get focused on." He turned to Grey. "Get your laptop, start downloading all the data. Get as much of it done on that field trip as you can." He jabbed his finger at him for emphasis.

"Sure," Grey replied. "And what are _you_ going to do, may I ask?"

"Me?" Chris smiled darkly. "I'm going to shadow this Jeremie kid. If he's as smart as you say, he's going to be the one doing anything to _our_ computer. I'm going to find out if he's done anything."

Grey nodded in agreement, then jumped as the bell rang again, signaling five minutes. He quickly rushed off to his class. Chris watched him go, then headed off to shadow Jeremie.


	3. Tracking

Operation: CODESTRIKE

Chapter 3

Silently, Chris slipped through the halls of Kadic Academy, moving almost without a sound. At first, he paused every couple feet, making sure that he wasn't spotted by his target. But as time wore on, he abandoned more and more of his caution. He could have walked right behind Jeremie, and the boy wouldn't have noticed him. He seemed rather focused on something, so much that he didn't look up from his feet as he moved, walking just slow enough for it not to be called running. Chris had a bad feeling he knew what the boy was thinking of. He kept following him. Quickly, he guessed where he was being led; Jeremie's room in the boarding dorms, the one a couple doors down from Chris and Grey's own. Good. If the boy spotted him, Chris had a cover story. You were allowed to go back to your room at this time of day, after all.

Still running silent, Chris kept pace. He was close enough that he could hear anything that Jeremie said, and there seemed to be plenty to hear; the boy was quietly talking to himself in French. From what Chris could hear, he was saying something along the lines of "got to be right" over and over again.

Confusion filled Chris's mind. What the hell could he need to be so right about?

Though he listened hard, he couldn't make out anything else from the boy's mumblings. Frustrated, but not discouraged enough to give up pursuit, Chris kept moving.

In moments, he saw that his theory had been correct; Jeremie was moving towards his room. Chris slowed here. The hallway was empty, with no cover for him to use. So he changed tactics; he went from hiding in cover to hiding in plain sight. Sticking his hands in his pockets, Chris strode out into the hall, bobbing his head to imaginary music. As he walked, he noticed he and Jeremie weren't the only people in the hall. At the other end, leaning against Jeremie's door, was a girl Chris had seen a couple times, something unsurprising considering the girl's shockingly pink hair and matching colored clothing. Chris frowned as he tried to remember anything about her. She was Canadian, he remembered that. Probably French-Canadian, considering that she was at Kadic. An exchange student, like himself. Had a last name like some rock band...Beetle? Zeppelin? Stones?

Yes, that was it. Stones. He couldn't remember her first name. though. A...something. Alana?

Though that wasn't the biggest question in Chris's mind. That was; what the hell was she doing outside Jeremie's door?

Waiting for him seemed to be the answer. The moment Jeremie noticed the girl, he quickly hurried over to her. Chris slowed, predicting a conversation. Needing new cover, he turned and walked to his own door and pretended to fish around for his key, all the while listening to the two talk.

"There you are." Stones said, leaning away from the door and closer to Jeremie. "What took you so long?"

"Jim," Jeremie replied. "He caught me in the courtyard. Got mad about me missing so many PE classes."

"You really should stop skipping them so much," Stones replied.

_Skipping? Interesting... _Chris thought. He noticed Stone's voice sounded worried. In the back of his mind, he wondered just how good of friends they were...

"PE's just a waste of time," said Jeremie. "I have more important things I could be doing than running around kicking balls aimlessly."

Stones giggled at the unintentional innuendo, eliciting a confused look from Jeremie and a stifled laugh from Chris. Thankfully, Stones and Jeremie didn't hear him, and continued talking.

"Still, you really should stop working so hard. It's not healthy for you." She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. Chris's approximation of their friendship status jumped several levels.

Jeremie replied with a snort. "I'll stop when I finish with the program." He muttered. "Besides, I was never very good a gym in the first place."

Stones giggled again. "Well, I guess I can't really make you stop, Jeremie." She said, though Chris noticed a smile tugging at her lips. He guessed she probably knew a couple ways to get him to stop...

_Shut up..._ Chris told the back of his mind.

"But still, I think…" Stones continued, then stopped. Out of the corner of his eye Chris saw her look up. Jeremie turned to follow her gaze.

Chris simply smiled an saluted the two.

"Can't find my key." He said. Jeremie and Stones nodded sympathetically, then turned back to their conversation. Chris continued to mime looking for his key, while continuing to listen.

"You were saying?" Jeremie said. Stones glanced over at Chris again.

"Never mind. What did you have to show me?"

"Oh, right." Jeremie quickly opened the door to his room and held it for Stones, bowing as he did so. Stones giggle, then swaggered into the room. Jeremie followed and closed the door behind him.

Once he was sure that the two had gone into Jeremie's room, Chris slipped into his own. He shut the door and quickly turned off anything that could make noise. Though his room was several over from Jeremie's, he could easily hear what was transgressing in his target's room via the ventilation system. During his first week at the academy, Chris (through random boredom-induced experimentation), found that if you removed the grill from the cold-air return vent present in the ceilings of all the dorm rooms and stuck your head into it, you could easily hear what was happening in the rooms directly next to yours and the ones just beyond that on both sides, depending on which way you turned your head.

Quickly, Chris did just that, climbing on top of his desk and removing the grill. Recently, he'd jerry-rigged his vent for just such an occasion as this,fully opening the vent then re-securing the metal cover with museum putty, stolen from his art class. The putty was strong enough to hold the grate over the vent and make it look like it was sealed, but also made it easy to remove the panel.

Turning his head, he continued to eavesdrop on Jeremie.

"...wasn't a glitch," Jeremie was saying. "It was sabotage. I don't know how he managed to get into my computer, but he managed to block the super scan..."

_He? _Chris wondered. _Who the hell's he talking about? Grey?_

"But you fixed it, right? And secured it?" replied Stones.

"Yes, he won't be able to block it again. But it's still worrying. He's getting more dangerous by the day. I need to find a way to get that antivirus working, and soon. But I can't find any more time to work on it!"

"You might consider taking a break." Stones suggested, voice soothing. "I just learned in Health class that stress can cause the higher brain functions to be temporarily suppressed..."

"I'll rest...you know what? I think I will take a break." Even distorted by several yards of echoing metal, Chris could still hear resignation in Jeremie's voice.

"Trust me, you'll feel a lot better once you do." Stone giggled before continuing. "Besides, I doubt the supercomputer's going to sprout legs and run away if you leave it alone for a day or two."

"You're right. Thank you, Aelita."

_Aelita_. The name rang in Chris's mind. The girl's full name was Aelita Stones.

That was also one of the words that he wasn't able to understand in Jeremie's conversation earlier. And the supercomputer he'd mentioned _had_ to be the same one in the factory. The one running Lyoko. The other word he hadn't understood.

Chris's blood ran cold, and he felt his hands shake. He had to force them to still to avoid sending tell-tale vibrations through the vent.

There wasn't any doubt; Jeremie knew about the computer, and Aelita was in on it. And the conversation he'd had with Stern and the group at lunch proved that they knew too. This was _bad_. He had to contact Grey, tell him to hurry it up-

Chris's internal musing was suddenly and violently broken by a loud rapping at his door. The sound was loud enough by itself, but the vent Chris had his head in made it echo. He recoiled on instinct, lost his footing on the desk, and promptly fell to the floor with a cry of surprise.

"Son of a bitch!" He howled, in English. He quickly rose to his feet and shook off the shock. "I'll be right there!" He called to the person on the other side of the door. Quickly, he replaced the vent cover, dusted himself off, and opened the door.

_Speak of the devil..._ He thought to himself. The person on the other side was none-other than the "gothic Asian chick" of Ulrich's group. Yumi, that was her name.

For a moment, fear gripped Chris's chest. Slowly, he started to reach for his combat knife.

Then he noticed that Yumi wasn't alone. There was another girl with her; someone Chris knew much better. She was hard to miss, blond hair cascading down her shoulders, blue eyes alight. Willow Fox, one of the two girls that made up the other half of Chris and Grey's four-person exchange group.

_I was wondering when they were going to meet each other..._ Chris thought to himself. Willow had a thing for Japanese culture, and considering Yumi's origins...

"Hi Chris!" Willow said, before promptly pulling Chris into a hug that drove the air from his lungs and forced her cleavage into his face.

"Hi...Willow..." He gasped out. "Easy...can't...breath..."

"Oh, sorry!" Willow let go of Chris as fast as she'd grabbed him. During the whole exchange, Yumi stood motionless, though Chris thought he saw the barest hint of a smile tug at her lips.

"Sorry about the glomp." Willow said, none of the stated emotion in her voice. "I'm trying to prove my devotion to Japanese culture to Yumi-chan here."

Yumi simply gave a small wave and stayed silent. Chris didn't blame her.

"Uh huh." Chris grunted, rubbing his mid-riff. He was all to familiar with Willow's..._obsession_ wasn't really the right word for it. "Is there any other reason that you're here, other than to attempt to strangle me? I was kind of in the middle of something."

"Yeah, actually." Willow breezed past Chris and sat down on his bed. "I was talking with Yumi-chan-"

"Please, just Yumi." The Asian girl corrected. "I mean, you got it right and all, but it's really kinda weird. I haven't been called that since I left Kyoto when I was a kid."

"Fine, _Yumi_ and I were talking 'bout manga and stuff," Willow continued, rolling her eyes. "And it turns out she's a fan of Black Butler too!"

"Okay..." Chris's mind whirled, trying to remember what the heck Willow was talking about. He got so into it that he almost missed the next part of what Willow was saying.

"-and I was wondering if you still had those collections that I lent you." She finished.

Chris nodded rapidly, happy to finally understand what Willow wanted. She was referring to a set of comics that she'd let him borrow a couple of weeks ago. He'd almost completely forgotten about them.

"Yeah, of course I still have them. Here." Chris reached up onto the shelf above his bed and retrieved a large stack of paper-back books. Willow's face lit up and she energetically yanked the pile from Chris's hands before Chris finished. Instantly, she was off, talking almost non-stop as she leafed through the books.  
>Chris glanced over at Yumi, who looked a bit put off. She lifted her eyes from Willow and mouthed "help" to him.<p>

Chris shrugged in response. There really wasn't anything he could do. Yumi slumped her shoulders and went back to looking at Willow.

"...and Sebastian's all like, "no way, man, I'm too awesome for that," and Grell is all "fine, but I'll have to cut you with my chainsaw then", but then-" She paused in mid-rant, eyes darting around. "Crap, why am I telling you this! I have the whole damn season on DVD!" Without a word, she left, sprinting for her room and leaving Chris alone with Yumi. The moment she was out of ear shot, the black-clad girl flopped down onto Chris's bed.

"Arg." She moaned. "I thought she'd never leave."

"Well your still out of luck. She'll be back." Chris replied, frowning. He wasn't to happy about a girl who was probably his enemy, especially a _Japanese_ girl, simply laying down on _his_ bed...

Yumi simply groaned and covered her face with her arm. Silence reigned for a bit.

"Well...this is awkward." Yumi said finally. Chris grunted.

_Think, think, think...gotta find something to talk about...something that doesn't involve the computer, can't let anything slip... _Chris thought to himself.

Yumi saved him the trouble.

"So...I read Millie's interview with you in the paper," She said.

Chris jumped, broken from his thoughts.

"Oh, yeah? Doesn't surprise me. This place seems kinda dry on good reading material."

"There's really not much else fresh to read around here, it's true." Yumi admitted. She slid farther back on Chris's bed so her back was against the wall. Chris clenched his fist against the table. "I mean, there's the library, but they haven't gotten a new book in _years_."

"Sure." Chris wasn't really sure where Yumi was going with this, but he decided to let it go. As long as they were focusing on him...

"So, what about the interview?"

Yumi paused, observing him. Chris forced himself not to move.

"Well, what you said about not wanting to come..."

"It's true. Just like I said to Millie." Chris clenched his other hand as well. Yumi paused, apparently at a loss for words.

"Then why are you here?" She asked, finally.

Chris felt a dark smile pull at his lips and chuckled.

"By accident."

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Yumi raise one of her eyebrows. She wanted an explanation.

With a shrug, Chris gave her one. It was easier and safer than an actual conversation.

"When the exchange program first set this whole thing up, they went to a bunch of different schools and offered them the chance to go. Anyone who was interested got to try for it. At my school, they had so many people sign u that they had a drawing to see who got to go on this little 'adventure'. First prize was a trip here, and there were a bunch of runner-up prizes so the people who didn't get to go didn't feel left out, hell if I know _why_. I wasn't going to enter, but these guys in my science class came to me and said they had a way for everyone to get what prize they wanted. So I entered."

"Seems like a pretty quick change of heart..." Yumi muttered. Chris laughed again.

"One of the runner-up prizes was an Xbox controller. I happen to have an Xbox back home, and I needed another controller. So I entered for that."

"Oh...So how the heck did you end up here?"

"Well, as it turns out, the whole reason that the guys needed me to enter was so that they could fill up the last open slot in the drawing. They'd filled the rest with their friends, and apparently the plan was if any of them got in, they'd give the trip to the guys who organized the whole thing, in exchange for payment in some other way. But there was a hitch in their plan; the teachers found out. When they did, they disqualified everyone involved in the plan."

"In other words, pretty much every other person who entered." Yumi guessed.

"Damn right. That's how I got here; I won by freaking default." Chris sighed and shrugged. "On the bright side, I did get my controller. Of course, my Xbox is currently stuck Stateside, so..."

"Pity."

"Yeah..."

Silence fell again.

"So..." Chris started. "Any particular reason you wanted to know?"

"Not really, just curious." Yumi shrugged again. Chris grunted.

"Well, that and Odd was asking..."

"Della Robia?"

"Yeah. Said something about how "we're too good for some American boy,", or something like that."

"I see." Chris growled. He clenched his hands, and his fingers brushed the handle of his combat knife.

"I'm pretty sure he was just showing off, though. He had another girl on his arm."

"Of course." Another thing Chris had learned during his short time at the academy; Odd Della Robia was a womanizer of the highest caliber. He burned through girls faster than a machine gun used up ammunition.

He was going to tell Yumi just what Odd could do with his pointy French head, but from the hallway came the sound of pounding footsteps. He simply fell silent and waited. In seconds, Willow appeared in the doorway, out of breath and clutching a stack of DVD's.

"Got 'em!" She gasped out. "All of them! This is going to kick ass!"

She hurried inside and pulled Yumi to her feet. The Asian girl didn't resist, but gave a quick look back at Chris.

"Good to meet you!" She called out, before Willow dragged her out of sight. Chris waved once, then clenched his hand into a fist the moment he left. With growl of anger, he ripped his knife from it's sheath and slammed it down on the table. The blade sunk a good inch into the cheap wood and stuck. Chris clenched his hands and let the anger burn itself out, before grabbing his knife and sliding it back home.

He sat down on his bed and placed his head in his hands. Barely a day had gone by since Grey had found out about the computer, and they were already fighting a group over it...

Chris glanced up. On his desk, next to the gouge caused by his knife, was his cell phone.

Grey needed to know everything he had just learned. He might know what to do.

Chris glanced up at the vent he had been listening in minutes earlier with a scowl.

_It's on now, Belpois, _ He thought to himself. _And I'm gonna kick your ass just like my grandpa did to your traitor Vichy France ancestors and their German pals back in '44_.

With that, he got up, closed his door, and grabbed his phone.

Several kilometers from Kadic, with the distance growing by the minute, Grey sat on the bus, ignoring the chatter of students around him. Had he devoted any thought to that matter, he probably would've smiled slightly at the well-hidden reluctance of the other students to annoy him. In the short time he'd been at the school, they'd already learned to leave him alone. They'd certainly picked up on it faster than the students at his school in the States.

Though they would undoubtedly have been interested in his current task if they hadn't been leaving him alone. Sure, few, if any, of them would've been able to understand what he was doing, but still... with his reputation for privacy and the current contents of the screen of his laptop, anyone would be suspicious.

His laptop pinged, an error in his code. Tapping over to it, he fixed it, then continued writing as the debugging tool he had written himself continued to run on the rest of the code. In the empty seat next to him sat a cell phone and his external hard drive, both connected by multiple wires to his backpack and from there to his laptop. Every once in a while he glanced at both, making sure they were still safe and in a secure position. He'd lost electronics to random bus movement before, and he wasn't about to let it happen again, especially not to these devices. The machine-gun-fire clacking of keys never changed pace, even as he looked over them.

He sat in the front of the bus. Predictably, none of the other students had wanted the seats in the front, instead opting for the ones in the rear of the bus, as far away from the teachers, who sat a few seats behind him talking amongst themselves, ignoring their classes. Two seats ahead of him, Jim sat with his arms crossed, watching the group with a wary eye. He ignored Grey completely, focusing on the more active kids at the back of the bus. Just as he'd intended.

Ten minutes into the bus ride, Grey looked up as someone sat down in the seat across the isle from him. It was the French boy he had filled Chris on, Odd.

"What're you doing up here?".

Grey looked up at him, still typing at the same speed. "Trying to get things done."

Ignoring the barbed tone of his voice (or not noticing it at all), Odd stayed where he was. "Well yeah, that's obvious. But what're you trying to do?"

He leaned across the aisle, trying to see the laptop's screen.

Grey tapped two keys, and the contents of the screen disappeared, replaced with a text editor and nearly thirty pages of blather about some sort of somatic cell, the homework for the advanced biology class he was in with Chris. He continued typing, but had Della Robia been paying more attention, he would've noticed that what Grey was typing had no connection with what was actually appearing on screen. false homework program had been an idea of Chris's, thought up originally as a novel way to cover playing video games in class, but created by Grey. It contained nearly eighty pages of random homework assignments, and would show between twenty and thirty when first launched. As the user typed, it would continue to fill in the assignment from it's memory, regardless of what keys they pressed. A touch of Grey's own was that it would convey key-presses back to whatever program had been running beforehand, so he could continue to code while making others think he was doing something unimportant, like the essay on mitosis that he was supposed to be doing.

"Homework," he said coldly. Odd visibly lost interested the moment he mentioned the dreaded "H-word"

"Okay, fine. Can you at least stop typing when you're talking to me? It's kinda creepy. Seriously, not even Jeremie can type that fast while he's talking, and he's crazy about computers."

"I'm crazier." Grey said coolly. "Now, if you'd stop annoying me, I'd like to get back to this essay. I want to have it done before we arrive."

"Jeez, calm down." Odd muttered something under his breath, a curse word in Spanish that he'd probably picked up from dating a Spaniard at some time or another.

"Don't call me that," said Grey over his shoulder as the boy headed back towards his friends at the rear of the bus. He, too, knew Spanish.

Odd threw him a one-fingered salute, which Grey ignored, already back to his code, having not even paused in his typing.

_A useful skill, that,_ mused Grey to himself. _And one that apparently even the vaunted Jeremie lacks. Interesting. _

He made a mental note to mention this discovery to Chris whenever the he felt down. Finding out that someone he knew was better than a French person never failed to bring his fellow exchange student's spirits up.

Though, in point of fact, he had never met, nor even heard of, someone who could do what he had been doing: formulate what he wanted to put into the computer in his head, then effectively queue it up in his mind to be typed as fast as his hands could move. In his mind, he was nearly eight hundred lines of code ahead of what he was typing in.

Eight hundred lines of code was eroded by his rapid pace, and before a further ten minutes had passed, he was done with the program. Making sure that the phone and hard drive were connected to the power source in his backpack that Chris had "liberated" from the Kadic computer lab and his laptop, he pressed the run button.

Almost immediately, the phone lit up, and the hard drive began chittering to itself. Thousands of lines of code streamed past on the screen. In the factory, a phone hidden somewhere in the mass of wires surrounding the supercomputer lit up as well. Data was exchanged, lines of code passing through the ether between the two devices.

Grey sat and watched the files download for a few minutes, then pulled up an index of everything that had been copied already, just to pass the time. There were quite a few things that had been skipped over already – things that had been deemed too complex to copy wirelessly by the program without the risk of massive file corruption. He filtered the list by things that had been skipped, just to see what he still had ahead of him, and started to look through them.

_Why would a program for a scanner be… eight terabytes?_

He swore under his breath in Spanish.

_Could be a bug...nah, that's not right. Well, I've got to see more of that one later._

He scrolled down some more, before finding something even more interesting.

_Return to the past'?_ He wondered. _What the heck is that? Some kind of backup thing? Nah, doesn't fit. Maybe it's for altering the timeline of the virtual world…_

His train of thought was interrupted by a pop-up on the screen – a picture of Chris, with the words 'incoming call' a number superimposed over it. He clicked the green button on the box to answer it, and pulled a wireless headset (cannibalized from an Xbox Live communicator) out of his backpack.

"Yeah?"

"We've got trouble." Chris's voice came from the other end of the line, and Grey could tell he was worried. "It's confirmed, Belpois knows about the factory. He was talking about it with his girlfriend Aelita."

"Oh?" Grey raised his eyebrow. "Aelita Stones, the girl with the hair?"

"Yeah, that's her. And before you ask, yes, I'm damn sure they're a couple. Well, at least Aelita thinks they are. Not sure about Jeremie..."

"Stay focused. How do you know that they know?"

"I tailed Jeremie to his room, like I said I would, and listened through the air vent. Heard of something called a 'super scan', whatever the hell that is. He was talking about it being interfered with by someone."

"Who?"

"No idea, just kept saying 'he'. Thought it might be you."

"It wasn't me." Grey confirmed. "I haven't seen anything like that yet."

"Anything else I should know about?"

"Not really. That Asian chick, Yumi, is being dragged around by Willow. She brought her into our room for a while, made for awkward conversation. Nothing about the factory, don't worry. Just be careful. You know Willow gets around Asians, what with her obsession with anime and all."

"Right, I'll be careful."

"Sure. Anyway, how goes Operation: CODESTRIKE?"

"CODESTRIKE?"

"You know. That thing with the computer. I gave it a code name. Too risky to say it with Jeremie's group near."

Grey glanced down at the screen. The data transfer was still in progress.

"I've got it running now.

"Any idea you'll be done?"

"I think it'll be done by around eleven tonight. There's some weird stuff in here though, the weirdest of which is going to require being on-site to copy. I don't want to risk it getting corrupted."

"Of course. Damn you, Murphy."

"Hear that. So I'll keep this running, and we'll go in tonight."

"Solid copy. I'll see you when you get back." There was a click, and Chris hung up the phone.

Grey slipped his headset back into his bag and went back to work.


End file.
